The Amityville Horror (film series)
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The Amityville Horror 1979 film poster
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Amityville Horror film series is a series of American horror films that currently consist of 19 films and centers on events in a haunted house in Amityville, New York.
Dardano Sacchetti (Uncredited)
The films have at various times been owned by several different production and distribution companies internationally and in the United States. American International Pictures produced and released the original film, before Orion Pictures bought the rights to the film, as well as II and 3-D. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) now owns films one through 3-D, and released them in a box set in 2005. While 4 was a TV film broadcast on NBC, it has been released multiple times by independent distribution companies in recent years (one of which was Vidmark, who also released Curse; Vidmark is now owned by Lionsgate). It's About Time, A New Generation and Dollhouse have all been released by Republic Pictures.
The 1984 British film Bloodbath at the House of Death is largely a spoof of the 1979 film.
In The Simpsons' first Halloween special, "Treehouse of Horror", the family experiences paranormal activity in their new home, which was the site of a mass murder and was built on an Indian burial ground.
Scary Movie 2 parodies the scene in which the priest blessing the house is attacked by flies.
None of the films are direct sequels to each other, and parts I, II, and IV are the only films based on books from the Amityville book series and establish references with each other. Amityville II is a prequel to the original 1979 film, which tells the story of the DeFeo family's mass murder (though they are named the Montelli family in the film). Amityville 3-D is a sequel to the first film based on the accounts of Stephen Kaplan (renamed John Baxter for the film) who was trying to prove that the Lutz family's story was a hoax. Due to legal disputes with the actual Lutz family the events of the first film could not be directly referenced including the Lutz family themselves who were never referenced by name. The film, oddly, also refers to the murders that happened in Amityville II as the DeFeo murders despite the family having been renamed Montelli.
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